Book Review: Ella Learns to Dance
Ella Learns to Dance. Stenetta Anthony, Covenant Books, 22 December 2022, Paperback and eBook, 28 pages.
Reviewed by Susan Gaspar.
Children’s books usually focus on a charming central character, an engaging adventure, or beautiful illustrations. But good children’s books offer something more: an insight, a solution, or a valuable lesson. And the best children’s books provide all those things without the reader being aware of them. I have found that the most memorable and affecting children’s books are no different from adult literature in that they are rich with human experience and feel like they are being told for the first time.
Ella Learns to Dance is a short, sweet story with a clear teaching moment. Which makes sense, as author Stenetta Anthony has a background as an educator. But the tale doesn’t feel preachy or heavy-handed. Instead, it’s told with gentle words and soft-focus illustrations that have a nostalgic, heartfelt appeal.
Ella is an elephant who loves to dance, and she longs to take ballet classes. Discouraged and mocked by her elephant friends for wanting to do something not only out of the ordinary but downright unheard of, it’s a take on the age-old tale of personal desire, discouragement, and perseverance on the road to success. Ella’s desire to dance could have been exemplified by a human as the central character, but the sheer impossibility of an elephant on pointe offers an extremist take on the “that will never happen” element here.
Ignoring her nay-saying friends, Ella makes her way to a ballet class and finds herself mostly ignored by the teacher. She is made to observe, and there is no dancing for her at that first class. But the next day she is given a clear but difficult challenge of standing on tiptoe. Ella struggles for weeks, but after hard work (and some suggestions from her newly found human ballet class friends), she finally discovers a way to master the assignment. In the end, she returns home and joyfully twirls and dances on pointe for her elephant friends and believes herself to be on the path to becoming a prima ballerina.
It could be argued that Ella’s elephant peers are less than supportive, or that the ballet teacher prejudges a new (and non-traditional) student, or that her dream of dancing was preposterous from the start. But really, what is life but a series of hopes, choices, and risk-taking, often clouded by doubt, disbelief, and failure? Ella’s desire and commitment is strong enough to push the negatives aside—a valuable lesson for young children experimenting with new activities and identities.
We all could stand to remember and embrace the wisdom in Ella Learns to Dance. And the author’s personal mission “to evoke a love of reading in all children” is a noble one. To find out more about Stenetta Anthony, visit www.stenettaanthony.weebly.com